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At first, the behavioral ecologist Zoya Goldsborough thought that the small figure seen on the back of a monkey in Capuchin in the footage of her camera lid was just a baby Capuchin. But something, she said, seemed to be off. A more careful look revealed the unexpected coloring of the figure. She quickly sent a screenshot of her research associates. They were puzzled.
“I realized that this was really something we hadn’t seen before,” Goldsborough said.
Further observation of the video and the cross-check among the researchers revealed that the small figure is actually a monkey of a different type of beaches.
“I was shocked,” Goldsborough said.
As the Goldsborough searched through her other footage, she noticed the same elderly monkey-Capuchina, nicknamed “Joker” for the scar of her mouth-and the baby’s monkey in other videos. Then she noticed other male cappuccini, known scientifically as an imitator of Cebus capucinus, doing the same. But why?
Using a 15 -month camera for a camera from their research site on Jikaron Island, a small island of 55 kilometers (34 miles) off the coast of Panama and part of the National Park which, the Max Planck Institute of Animals, the University of Constance, and the Smithsonian Institute, the University of the Institute, the University of Constant A researcher.
They found that starting with Joker, four Underburst and Capuchin Men’s Men’s Men’s Men’s Men’s Monkey Monkey Monkey Monkey Between January 2022 and March 2023 Without Evidence of Capuchins, who feed or play or play with Jicarón infants. They reported their initial findings on Monday in the magazine current biology.
However, there are many questions left. And unraveling the mystery can be crucial, the researchers say. The Jicarón Howler population is an endangered subspecies of Howler monkeys, Alouatta Palliata Coibensis, according to IUCN Red List of Filleding Sings, a global evaluation of the vulnerability of the disappearance species. In addition, the mothers of Howler Monkey give birth only once every two years.
Developing hypotheses
Considering the Capuchin Hijacker’s case was like a roller coaster where we continued to conduct different interpretations, and then we will find something that proved this wrong, “says Goldsborough, lead author of the study and doctoral student with the Institute of Animal Behavior at Max Planck and the University of Constance.
Jikaron Island is uninhabited by people. Without electricity and rocky terrain, scientists need to draw their equipment and other materials to the island with boats when the tides are correct, making it difficult to personal observations of the mothers of the Capuchins difficult. That is why they use camera traps: hidden, triggered cameras that capture photos and videos of the Capuchins on Earth.
But there is a great limitation of their work: you do not know what you cannot see, and the camera traps do not capture what is happening in Treetops where the Howler Monkeys live. So, the study team could not finally confirm how, when or why cappuccins abducted babies.
At first, the researchers thought it was a rare, one -off case of adoption. It is known that the monkeys “adopt” abandoned babies of the same or other species. But Joker didn’t take care of the wars – he just wore them on his back, without a clear benefit to himself, until the babies eventually died of hunger without access to breastfeeding.
Men’s capuchins seem to have had little interactions with the abducted baby howl. – Brendan Barrett/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
This is a strange behavior for male primates, said Pedro Diaz, a primatologist at the University of Verakruzana in Mexico, who studied the monkeys in Mexico and did not participate in the study. In prima, it is quite common to find women who accept or abduct babies who then take care of them as a maternal instinct, he said. But Jicarón men did not provide mother care.
When the behavioral ecologist Corina first read about the abductions of Jicarón’s monkey, she suspected something else was happening. “They probably eat these babies,” says most, an assistant professor at Iowa State University, who studies babuini, about his original thoughts.
The abduction of predation is not uncommon in the world of animals, added most who have not participated in the study. But as she learned more about the team’s observations, she was surprised to find that this was not happening in this case.
Instead, the Capuchins passed around the baby howls with days with a little interactions – no play, minimal aggression and little interest. Why they would exercise the energy to steal babies is largely vague, said study co -author Brendon Barrett, a behavioral environmentalist and adviser to Goldsborough.
However, it is important to note that these island capuchins develop in a different environment than their relatives on the continent, Barrett explained. Cappuccini are “destructive, research agents of chaos,” he said. Even in the continental part, they tear things apart, hit the nests of wasps, struggle with each other, harass other species and move around, just to see what happens.
On an island without predators, “it makes a little more risky to do stupid things,” Barrett said. The island capuits can also spread as they do not need force in the protection number, which allows them to explore.
With this relative safety and freedom, Jicarón’s monkeys can be a little bored, researchers suggest.
The influence of boredom
It turns out to be boredom, it can be a key engine of innovation – especially on the islands and especially among the younger individuals of one species. This idea is the focus of Goldsborough’s research on Jicarón and Coiba’s Capuchins, the only monkey populations in those areas that have been observed using stones such as nuts. In accordance with the abductions, only men use Jicarón tools, which remains a mystery to researchers.
“We know that cultural innovations in several cases are related to the youngest, not the oldest,” Diaz said.
For example, evidence of potato washing behavior in the Macaque on the Japanese Island of Koshima was first observed in the young female nickname IMO.
There are several possible reasons for this, Diaz explained. Adolescence is a time during which primates are independent of their mothers when they start eating and exploring themselves. At this stage, monkeys are also not fully integrated into the society of their group.
Excessive imitation and human children to imitate the behavior of others, even if they do not understand it, it can also be in a game, most said.
Acts for abduction of the monkeys of Capuchins can be arbitrary behavior caused by boredom, researchers suggest. – Brendan Barrett/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
This excessive imitation is not found in other animals, the most outlined, but “I almost feel that these other capuchins do it,” maybe as a way of social attachment with a joker, she noted.
Most say she usually thought that the need, not the free time, was the mother of the invention in nature. But “This document makes a good case for (the idea that) maybe sometimes animals that are really smart, like capuchins, just get bored,” she noted.
People and other primates, known, share a certain level of intelligence, defined by the use of tools and other indicators, but some shared traits may be less desirable, Goldsborough said.
“One of the ways we are different from many animals is that we have many of those arbitrary, almost without a function of cultural traditions that really harm other animals,” she added.
As a child growing up in the northeastern part of the United States, Barrett said he had caught frogs and lightning bugs in masonry jars while examining outdoors. Although he never wanted to hurt them, he knows that these activities are usually not pleasant to the animal.
The behavior of the abduction of the Capuchins may be similar – if not moderately fun for them. Barrett and Goldsborough said they hoped this new behavior will fade, like fads among people, come and go. Or maybe Howler’s monkeys will get caught up with what is happening and adapt their behavior to protect their babies better, Goldsborough added.
“It’s like a mirror that affects ourselves,” Barrett said, “at first glance, it does things to other species that can harm them and look brutal, which have no real purpose.”
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